Racial Polarization

Racial Polarisation – What is the solution

Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, at the forum organised by PUSPITA (University of Malya Non-Hostelite Students’ Union) at Dewan Tunku Chancellor, University of Malaya on Saturday, 24.11.1984 at 8 p.m. on ‘Polarisasi Kaum-Dimanakah penyelesaiannya?

Racial Polarisation – What is the solution

On 13th July 1984, the press reported a speech by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Musa Hitam, in Segamat who expressed concern over the present trend of segregation and polarisation among children if unchecked could spark off a confrontation of the races in the future.

Suddenly, everybody seemed to have discovered the problem of racial polarisation for the first time, and for over a month, the subject of racial polarisation was the the most popular subject of discussion, with newspapers running reports and articles about racial polarisation in the schools, in the university campuses, the civil service, with various proposals about how to solve racial polarisation ; but as the subject became the national topic of the day, in early September, the subject suddenly disappeared from public view as if the problem of racial polarisation had already been solved.

It would appear that in mid-July, a magician popped ‘racial polarisation’ like a rabbit out of thin-air, and for six weeks the rabbit of racial polarisation’ was romping all over the stage, but suddenly by September, the magician again waved his magic wand, and the rabbit of ‘racial polarisation’ disappeared back to thin air.

Racial polarisation in Malaysia is too serious a problem to be threated so lightly, and it is for this reason that I must commend PUSPITA for its initiative in organising a forum to bring back the problem of racial polarisation to the centre stage where it should always remain until it had been resolved.

Racial polarisation in Malaysia first became most acute in the 1970s, and my...